One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses

Virginia Woolf had her "moments of being"; Lucy Corin has her apocalyptic moments. An associate professor at UC Davis and a recipient of the 2012 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Prize, Corin favors the moments that flatten us, whether physically or emotionally. Even the most quotidian scenes in her fiction are disrupted by awkwardness and despair.

Her third book, "One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses," offers comedy and disaster in equal measure, with stories that specialize in surreal occurrences - as in an "Apocalyptasaurus" having "the last sex on earth."

The opening story, "Eyes of Dogs," starts plainly enough: "A soldier came walking down the road, raw from encounters with the enemy, high on release, walking down the road with no money."

Yet things quickly take a creepy, fairy-tale turn, worthy of the Brothers Grimm - or, more aptly, of Hans Christian Andersen, via "The Tinderbox," on which her story is based. (Andersen's tale begins, "A soldier came marching along the high road: 'Left, right - left, right.' He had his knapsack on his back, and a sword at his side; he had been to the wars, and was now returning home.")

Corin's retelling similarly involves a witch, a princess, a magical tinderbox, three powerful dogs and a violent, vengeful end to the witch - but in this version, the witch bears an uncanny resemblance to the soldier's mother, and when the soldier wins the heart of the princess, he finds her "drunk and so emotionally confusing."

The story "Madmen" features an adolescent girl, Alice, in a rather quirky coming-of-age tale. As Alice describes the momentous occasion of getting her period for the first time, she makes several references to picking up her "madman," and notes that "even kids who seem like they don't care about their madman are faking it." When Alice visits an asylum-like facility, filled with men and women in cells (it turns out there can be female madmen, too), the purpose soon becomes clear: In the weird country of Corin's imagination, these so-called madmen serve as adopted companions of sorts to these children.

"The whole idea is you take in a madman and that teaches you about Facing the Incomprehensible and Understanding Across Difference, and soon we are one big family," Alice says. After touring the asylum and choosing among candidates distinguished with labels including "Decadent Hedon," "Contemporary Bipolar" and "Recumbent Frenetic," Alice settles on a madman called Armand, fills out some paperwork, suits him up in the requisite harness and brings him home with her family.

The last of the collection's long-form stories, "Godzilla Versus the Smug Monster," is also quite strange (and just as engaging), but the best material is to be found in the assortment of "Apocalypse" stories, which take up the latter half of the book. Are they stories, really? Or are they prose poems? No matter. These pieces - some only a few lines long, their narrators unhinged, their syntax both rhythmic and offbeat - are baffling in the best sort of way.

One of the most impressive aspects of Corin's writing is her refusal to settle on a single voice or style. She is adept at delivering both punch-line jokes and genuine pathos, or landing somewhere in between. She seamlessly blends the menacing with the banal - as in this gem, just two lines in its entirety: "Got there and the ground was covered with bodies. Lay down with everyone and looked at the sky, bracing for the explosions." (Relax, this piece is called "July Fourth.")

With its absurd humor and array of unsettling themes - including grief, madness, familial strife, romantic failure and more - "One Hundred Apocalypses" is a delightful, endlessly inventive read.

Carmela Ciuraru is the author of "Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms." E-mail: books@sfchronicle.com